Imagine working as a cashier at a store at a very busy time of day when you’re the only person on the register. If a woman came in to return something and claimed to be in a big hurry, would you let her jump the line, or would you make her wait like everyone else?

In this story, one cashier is in this situation, and the story takes an interesting turn when he finally sees what the customer is returning.

Keep reading for the full story.

But I need to go pick up my kids NOW

I will never understand people and their need to come to the store to do something minutes before they need to be somewhere else.

But few take the cake like this lady I had around the time I first started.

This takes place about 2 or so years ago right around when I first started my retail job. It was about mid-afternoon, probably around 2:30 or so when we started to get our usual rush.

It was time for the manager to leave.

The thing is that depending on the day we either have single shift change (managers changing for the day) or double shift change (both manager and cashier change out) right about this time because that’s the way our scheduling works.

Thankfully it was just a single shift change on this day.

The head manager was helping me ring out as much as he could before he needed to pull his til and prep for the morning deposit (our store is required that both day and night shifts have separate deposits at the end of their respective shifts).

The store suddenly got very busy.

And it was like the wolves suddenly smelled the blood in the air as I suddenly had a line of probably a good 15-20 people in a matter of seconds.

Well literally nothing I can do because the manager has to get his money counted and the new manager coming in isn’t allowed to jump on until at least 5 minutes before the start of her shift. Any earlier and our hours system will read it as being overtime and we get chewed out by our higher ups–sometimes getting hours cut if we let it happen too much.

Besides, I’m quick and as long as there’s no serious hick ups or system malfunctions I knew I’d be able to handle things for the 20 or so minutes until the other manager could hop on and help.

One lady tried to cut the line.

Then walks in a woman who I’m guessing takes one look at the line and then one look at me because the next thing I hear is “Um, I have a return.”

Cue our conversation. M = Me, HL = Hurry Lady

I take a glance back and see a bag in her hands as I’m trying to hurriedly scan, bag, and check the person in front of me.

M: “I’m sorry, the other register had to close down because we’re getting ready for a shift change. It’ll still be umm glances to clock probably another 15 minutes before the next person will be on. But I can handle returns, if you can get into my line I’ll get to you as soon as I can.

It can’t hurt to ask!

HL: You mean they can’t come out and just do my stuff really quick?

M: I don’t think so but give me a second and I can check.

So I proceed to get the person I’m checking out to the point of card payment and race to the manager’s office like 10 feet away to see if he could possibly hop on for a second just to process her return.

He gave the woman the manager’s answer.

Of course he can’t because he’s just finished writing up the deposit so he wouldn’t have a til to use since he’d probably be needing to give her money back.

Understandable to me, besides I was sure that I’d probably get through my line before the next manager would even be getting on.

So I dart back, apologize for the small wait and hand off the receipt to the customer before getting started on the next person in line, all the while explaining this to HL as best I can.

She seemed defeated but seems like she’d rather hop into the line than just wait and watch it grow.

The woman is really impatient.

Well either my line was a LOT longer than I thought–which it really wasn’t because she was only like maybe 6 people behind my current customer–or something else because barely 5 minutes pass before,

HL: Is the other person still not ready? I really can’t be waiting.

M: No sorry, they have to wait until 3 before they can get on and–

HL: Well I can’t wait that long! I need to be getting my kids off the bus by then!

He couldn’t understand the woman’s logic, but to be fair, she may not have realized this was a busy time of day.

Now I’m frozen for a moment because

It’s very rare for our store to be anything but a mass of bodies rushing in and out at this time of day.

Why would you come to a store that you know is going to be slammed and still expect to be able to pick up your kids who are probably going to be dropped off in mere minutes from now???

M: I…I’m sorry but there’s nothing I can do. Even if they came out now the most they can do is run it through my machine and there’s other customers…

The other customers parted like the red sea.

HL: But I need to get to my kids!!

Now I don’t know how I got so lucky but the 5 people in front of her all seemed to come to the agreement to just let her go ahead. Whether that was to stop the whining or so kids wouldn’t be left alone at a bus stop, I’m not sure which.

But god what transpired next.

The return wasn’t going to be easy.

She pushes ahead and tosses her bag onto the counter.

I quickly toss my keys into the register and open up her bag.

There’s no receipt. I already know this is going to possibly go badly.

With our store if you don’t have a receipt and aren’t exchanging for anything or buying anything your excess goes onto a store gift card–no buts. Our register literally locks us out of being able to bypass this.

There was another problem.

I quickly explain this and am thankful when she’s fine with it, hoping it’s for the sake of just wanting to get out of here quickly. So I set up the type of return it is and scan the first item.

HL: What’s this?!

M: What?

HL: I paid way more than that for the item than it’s being returned for.

He understood the problem, but the customer didn’t.

Immediately I realize what’s happening.

The items she’s returning were seasonal (some fall/harvest candles) and our store was in the process of the last steps of discount before they’d be discounted so we could finish setting up our Christmas seasonal. So even if the price tag on the items reads something like $3 or $8, the current discount was at 90% off so they’d be ringing up for that price.

M: Oh, that’s because these are seasonal items that are on discount right now.

HL: So? I paid full price for these a month ago, why are you ringing them up at a discount.

The customer only has two options.

M: That’s how our system works. If you don’t have a receipt then we have no way of verifying if they were full price when they were bought. And our system locks us out of changing the price because it’s a return of this type.

It doesn’t but it sends up red flags from our store because it’s in our training to never price change items when doing returns of this type.

HL: But I want my money that I paid for back!

M: Sorry, like I said, I can’t do anything on my end. If you want I can keep going through with the return or we can cancel the return and you can keep the items.

The customer finally left.

HL: This is ridiculous…fine, fine…I’m sure I have the receipt laying around somewhere. I’ll just go home and be right back with it.

With that she grabbed up her items and stormed out.

By this point my line was horrifically long but at least by the time HL left it was only a couple more minutes before the next manager came to start ringing on our other register so we were able to avoid any customer riots.

He has a theory about why she didn’t come back, but it could be that she lost her receipt.

Came in for work the next day and asked if HL had come back to do the return.

She hadn’t. So it was likely that she had probably bought them at some point during their discount and was expecting to somehow be returned for their full price, as if the register only noted the discount during sales. It’s something that can happen surprisingly often around times when a bunch of our seasonal starts to be discounted.

Sorry folks but if anything companies are certainly smart enough to ensure that they never lose a cent more than they have to outside of human error.

Also let this be a lesson in always keeping your receipts for anything seasonal you buy if you don’t want to risk getting back less than what you paid.

She really should’ve kept her receipt, but if she was lying and did buy them at a discount hoping to return them for full price, that makes me wonder what else she was lying about. Does she even have kids?

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person thinks she was lying about having kids.

Another person points out a common scam.

Whatever she was really trying to do, it didn’t work.

Another person is sure she was lying.

She was either lying or really bad at planning her day.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.